In search of a gay soccer hero: The Secret Footballer on homophobia

By The Secret Footballer, for CNN

Updated 9:25 AM ET, Tue April 30, 2013

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Photos:Gay sports stars

Coming out – In 2011, Anton Hysen became only the second active footballer to come out as being gay -- more than 20 years after Justin Fashanu did so. While Fashanu was a high-profile star in England, Hysen plays in Sweden's lower leagues.

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Photos:Gay sports stars

Rainbow Laces – Hysen supported a campaign asking players to wear rainbow-colored laces to promote awareness of homophobia in football. However, Fulham's David Stockdale (pictured) was one of the few players at British clubs who took up the invitation.

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Photos:Gay sports stars

Rogers retirement – Former United States and Leeds United striker Robbie Rogers used his website to announce he was gay earlier in 2013 -- but then promptly retired from football at the tender age of 25. However, just months later he returned to the game with Major League Soccer team Los Angeles Galaxy.

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Photos:Gay sports stars

Fashanu suicide – England international striker Fashanu, the country's first £1 million black footballer, could not live with the scars of his revelation. He committed suicide in 1998.

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Photos:Gay sports stars

Breaking taboos – Former NBA player John Amaechi, who was raised in Britain, broke barriers as the first professional basketballer to announce he was gay in 2007. He made the revelations in his autobiography after retiring from the game.

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Collins' brave move – Jason Collins of the Washington Wizards became the first active NBA player to announce that he is gay on April 29, 2013. The 34-year-old was made a free agent in July but said he wanted to continue playing.

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Tennis pioneer – Sport's biggest lesbian star is 18-time grand slam tennis champion Martina Navratilova, who announced she was gay shortly after gaining U.S. citizenship in 1981. Her revelation came relatively early in her career and she went on to win many more titles.

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Equal rights – American four-time Olympic gold medallist Greg Louganis came out as gay when he was diagnosed with HIV in 1988. He told CNN's Piers Morgan in 2012 he believes in "equal rights for everybody."

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Earning respect – Former Wales rugby union captain Gareth Thomas described the conflict between his sport and his sexuality when he came out in 2009, telling the Daily Mail newspaper: "It is barbaric. I could never have come out without first establishing myself and earning respect as a player."

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Story highlights

Homosexual players in football remain scarce with Robbie Rogers the latest to come out and then retire

Footballers protect their own but cannot shield players from terrace abuse

Abuse for a gay player even in 2013 would be "intolerable"

Childhood is confusing. It's difficult to fully understand things at the best of times and, occasionally, you'll experience something that is unlike anything that you've experienced thus far.

One such example came early for me. During our regular family drives, my father would play a cassette from an old BBC radio program that he'd first listened to as a kid growing up in the 1960s.

The show was called "Round The Horne" and it featured a couple of camp homosexual characters who went by the names of Julian and Sandy -- played by Hugh Paddick and Kenneth Williams.

The pair were out-of-work actors who could be found running various fashionable and niche enterprises that always started with the word "bona" -- such as "Bona Films."

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Photos:Openly gay athletes

Photos:Openly gay athletes

David Denson, a first baseman for the Milwaukee Brewers' rookie affiliate in Helena, Montana, told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel in August 2015 that he is gay. The news makes him the first active player affiliated with a Major League organization to come out publicly. Click through to see other openly gay athletes.

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American soccer legend Abby Wambach's sexuality was an open secret for years before she married fellow soccer player Sarah Huffman in 2013.

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Swimmer Ian Thorpe, seen here in 2004 with one of his five Olympic gold medals, told an Australian news outlet that he is gay in an interview that aired on Sunday, July 13.

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Photos:Openly gay athletes

Former Missouri defensive end Michael Sam told ESPN and The New York Times that he is gay on February 9. Sam later became the first openly gay player to be drafted by a NFL team when he was taken by the St. Louis Rams in the seventh round.

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Photos:Openly gay athletes

Robbie Rogers became the first openly gay male athlete to play in a professional American sporting match when he took the field for Major League Soccer's Los Angeles Galaxy during a match against the Seattle Sounders on May 26.

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The sketches usually began with a very middle-class Kenneth Horne knocking on a shop door and asking "Hello, anybody there?" before Paddick answered "Ooh, hello! I'm Julian and this is my friend Sandy!"

The audience loved them and their appearances became a highlight of the show thanks to a mixture of "Polari" language -- gay slang -- and ever more risque double entendres.

Perhaps their best-known sketch is when Horne is looking for legal representation and pops into a little shop called "Bona Law."

Julian: "Well, it depends on what it is. We've got a criminal practice that takes up most of our time."

Horne: "Yes, but apart from that, I need legal advice."

This was my first exposure to homosexuality and, because it was through humor, ably explained by my father, it meant that the only confusion around the subject came as I wondered why the kids in my school playground called each other "bender" or "queer."

As a 10 or 11-year-old kid, you ask yourself very obvious and basic questions about the things that you're unsure about. Why are the kids calling each other these names when the kid in question isn't funny? Gays are funny, aren't they?

It was, of course, down to an ignorance brought about by a lack of exposure at my age.

As you build up more encounters, so you build up a more complete picture of something. But the older I get, I do find myself continually amazed by the amount of people I meet who are still ignorant or underexposed to a whole range of things.

It isn't necessarily their fault but it has a profound knock-on effect nonetheless.

There have been a couple of players who have "come out," most recently Robbie Rogers, the former Leeds United and United States forward, who took to his website to announce that he was gay ... and promptly retired from the beautiful game at the tender age of 25.

It was unfortunate for football and the gay community -- football is in desperate need of a gay icon -- yet was completely understandable.

"They (the players) often don't mean what they say," Rogers said. "It's that pack mentality. They're trying to get a laugh, they're trying to be the top guy. But it's brutal. It's like high school again -- on steroids."

Rogers was talking about a changing room that doesn't know that it has a gay player in its midst.

But I'm as certain as I can be that a changing room that does know that it has a gay player in its ranks would be a very safe place for a gay footballer.

That pack mentality works the other way, too. The group protects its own. It doesn't matter whether you are white, black, straight or gay. I'm as certain of that as I can be.

Sure, players will talk behind each other's backs, not necessarily in a disparaging way, but -- to the outside world at least -- the team is a united front.

But it is difficult, if not impossible, for even the tightest of squads to protect a player from the taunts of tens of thousands of fans.

Or, for that matter, even just a few people. As recently as 2008, a section of Tottenham Hotspur fans sang the following words to Sol Campbell as he lined up for Portsmouth against his former club:

"Sol, Sol, wherever you may be

Not long now until lunacy

And we won't give a f**k

When you're hanging from a tree

You're a Judas c**t with HIV."

It's easy to see why Robbie Rogers gave the answer he did when a journalist asked him what he thought the reaction might be if he were to line up for Leeds against, say, Millwall. "Woah!" Rogers exclaimed. "I can't even think about that." I can tell you now, it would be horrendous for him.

You know as well as I do that the abuse a homosexual player would receive from "fans" throughout the land would be intolerable.

That isn't to say that it wouldn't ease off, but would you want to be the player who goes first?

On England's south coast in Brighton -- an area with a large gay community -- the football team and its fans take a fair amount of stick both during home matches and at away grounds.

I've heard "fans" singing to their counterparts: "Who's the f****t in the pink?" And once during a home match: "Does your boyfriend know you're here?" -- which, I won't lie, made me smile because of the laughter it generated among the traveling Brighton contingent.

Interestingly, there are few, if any, headlines written about it either as a social commentary or by a journalist going for a bit of sensationalism.

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However, Brighton currently occupy a playoff berth in the Championship and, should they win promotion to the Premier League, I guarantee you that the headlines will begin in earnest next season -- something that will force the authorities to take a very public, zero-tolerating stance.

Perhaps that will turn out to be the first step on the ladder to a player "coming out."